Addresses:

Career

Worked in family businesses; formed political group, Comite Civico Plan
de Avanzada Nacional, with other business leaders, 1985; became
Guatemala City city council member, 1985; mayor of Guatemala City,
1991–99; ran for presidency and lost, 1999; ran again as
candidate of new party, Gran Alianza Nacional, 2003; took office as
president of Guatemala, 2004.

Sidelights

Oscar Berger twice ran for president of Guatemala, and won on his second
attempt, in 2003. Berger had been a popular mayor of Guatemala's
capital, Guatemala City, but swore to leave politics after he lost his
presidential bid in 1999. Conflict within the political party he had
helped found led to Berger's apparent retirement from politics.
But he nevertheless returned to the stage in 2003 at the head of a new
political party. Berger won in a second round runoff election with a
narrow majority. Praised as a good administrator and a skillful broker
of compromises, Berger inherited a country

Oscar Berger

plagued by poverty, famine, and an uncomfortable legacy of military
dictatorship. Berger's nickname is
el conejo,
or "the rabbit," and some analysts judged him too
manageable in the hands of Guatemala's entrenched business
interests. Nevertheless, immediately on taking office, Berger took
several bold steps, cutting the size of the army in accordance with a
1996 peace treaty, and endeavoring to cut corruption in government.
Early into his presidency, Berger had a high approval rating among
Guatemalans.

Berger was born in Guatemala City in 1946 to a wealthy family with
business interests in coffee and sugar plantations. Berger went to the
country's best private schools, and later earned a degree in law
and the title of notary public. After law school, Berger managed various
business interests, and he did not begin his political career until he
was almost 40 years old. In 1985, Guatemala ended years of military
dictatorship, though the country was still entrenched in a civil war
that lasted from 1960 to 1996. Berger joined with other businessmen and
his friend, Alvaro Arzu, and created the liberal policy group Comite
Civico Plan de Avanzada Nacional (Civic Committee for National
Advancement Strategy) in 1985. This group evolved into the national
political party Partido de Avanzada Nacional
(Party of National Advancement, known as PAN). Arzu won the mayoral
election in Guatemala City in 1985, and Berger held his first political
post that year, becoming a city council member. In 1990 Berger got the
PAN party blessing to run for mayor, replacing Arzu. Berger won the
election, and took office as mayor of Guatemala City in January of 1991.

In his first term as mayor, Berger confronted the complex problem of
traffic in the city. Berger wished to stimulate public transportation,
but was stymied by the owners of the bus companies. The owners banded
together and raised bus ticket prices unilaterally. Berger won the good
opinion of the citizens of Guatemala City for taking the side of the
people against the bus owners. This led to his reelection in 1995. The
transportation situation only got more difficult in his second term. In
1996, the bus owners went on strike. Berger eventually called on the
military to preserve order in the streets, and he also hired private
trucks to carry people to work. Berger successfully resolved the bus
strike, with concessions on both sides, and in 1998 the city acquired
its own fleet of buses.

The PAN party suffered internal dissension, but nonetheless promoted
Berger as its presidential candidate in 1999. Berger ran a race building
on his image as a populist, promising to fight poverty and urban crime.
But Berger was not a great orator, and this hindered his presidential
bid. Berger lost the election that year to Alfonso Portillo of the
conservative party Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG). Though Portillo
had also campaigned as a populist, his FRG party was led by
Guatemala's former dictator General Efrain Rios Montt.
Berger's loss embittered him, and he declared that he was leaving
politics forever. Portillo's administration, meanwhile, was beset
by scandals involving drugs and corruption, and the FRG party was roiled
by dissension over Rios Montt. Rios Montt had been banned from seeking
election because of his past actions, but he managed to have this ruling
overturned by a sympathetic court. Faced with what looked like a
weakened FRG, in 2003 Oscar Berger decided to return to politics. He won
the PAN party nomination as presidential candidate. Months after winning
the PAN nomination and gaining the support of his old friend, Arzu,
Berger defected from the party and became the candidate of a much
smaller party, the Gran Alianza Nacional (GANA). GANA was a coalition of
three still–smaller parties, and was considered a
center–right wing group.

The 2003 election made international waves because former dictator Rios
Montt ran as the FRG party candidate. The general was accused of crimes
against humanity, and courts both in Guatemala and in Spain were
considering trying him for his part in the deaths of thousands of
peasants in the months after he took power in a coup in 1982. His
election would have strained Guatemala's relations with many
other countries. But Rios Montt did poorly, and Oscar Berger won the
first round of polling. Berger faced off against Alvaro Colom, a textile
executive with much support in the indigenous Mayan community, for a
second round of voting. Berger won the second round with about 54
percent of the vote. Yet his GANA party won only 47 seats in the
158–seat congress. Immediately after the election, Berger began
putting together a legislative coalition with PAN and other political
parties.

In a sense, Berger's win seemed unenviable. Guatemala was racked
by poverty, famine, government corruption, and organized crime. Berger
had carried the nickname "rabbit" since childhood, and he
had been ridiculed for gaffes and verbal flubs while on the campaign
trail. Some political analysts doubted that he was a strong enough
figure to make a dent in Guatemala's problems. But after taking
office in January of 2004, Berger began making good on some difficult
campaign promises. Under terms of a peace treaty negotiated in 1996, the
Guatemalan government had pledged to reduce its armed forces. While
previous administrations had delayed implementing the treaty, Berger cut
the size of the army by more than 40 percent and closed most of
Guatemala's barracks. This finally put the size of
Guatemala's army in line with armies in neighboring Latin
American countries. Berger also publicly confronted his
government's unsavory past. In April of 2004, Berger held a
ceremony with the heads of Congress and the Supreme Court, and
acknowledged government complicity in the 1990 murder of human rights
worker Myrna Mack. Berger also moved against government corruption,
making all his ministers and officials sign a code of ethics. Though he
had won only 54 percent of the vote, in an election that many voters sat
out, early in his term Berger was very popular. A Mexican consulting
group took a poll showing that 83 percent of Guatemala's citizens
approved of Berger. This was the highest approval rating of any Latin
American head of state at that time. Berger vowed to use his time in
office to fight poverty and hunger, problems which all sides agreed were
extremely pressing.